Emotion words lost in dementia
People suffering from semantic dementia – a type of frontotemporal dementia and the second most common dementia in people under 65 – experience a severe loss of word and conceptual knowledge. Image: alexdans/iStockphoto Dementia can affect a person’s ability to recognise the meaning of common emotional words such as ‘thrilled’ and ‘annoyed’, according to new research.Dr Sharpley Hsieh and colleagues from Neuroscience Research Australia explored how people with different types of dementia comprehend words describing feelings, such as ‘doubt’ and ‘hopeful’.“People use emotion words in everyday conversation and don’t realise it. How often do we use sentences such as ‘I’m frustrated’ or ‘she’s impressed’? These are key words and you have to know them to understand a sentence,” Dr Hsieh says.Dr Hsieh found that people with Alzheimer’s disease are still able to understand these kinds of words, but people with other types of dementia are not.People suffering from semantic dementia – a...